


no grave can hold my body

by flowersalesman



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Aang (Avatar)-centric, Aangst, Air Nomad Genocide (Avatar), Angst, Gen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-17
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:21:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25942762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flowersalesman/pseuds/flowersalesman
Summary: The war was over, and The Gaang finally had time to take a step back and actually relax. Aang kind of wished that they could go back to travelling the world together.(The war was over, and the child soldiers are finally in a position to process their experiences.)
Relationships: Aang & Iroh (Avatar), Aang & The Gaang (Avatar)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 110





	no grave can hold my body

**Author's Note:**

> i've been working on this for multiple weeks now and i kind of hit a rut, so im just publishing a lil bit now and im hoping that will motivate me to finish the rest

Immediately after the war, they slept in the palace garden.

Technically, they  _ did  _ each have their own individual rooms- Zuko showed each of them where they could sleep for the night, waving off the few frantic servants that were left. They all made a show of leaving their few belongings in there, getting under the covers for a few minutes, before the oppressive silence and darkness of the walls ran each of them out into the courtyard.

Maybe, Aang wondered to himself,  _ maybe  _ Zuko knew that would happen. Maybe there was a reason why the gardens were the first stop on their tour. Aang himself was the second one out; the only other person there was also the only person with the kind of authority to acquire the amount of blankets and pillows scattered on the soft grass.

“Seems pretty cozy,” Aang said as he flopped down, immediately leaning on Zuko. “Do you do this often?”

“No,” Zuko told him tersely. Aang ignored it; he realized, after a while, that Zuko was awkward and uncomfortable with a lot of nice-seeming things, but he would still let someone know (very loudly) if they were acting in a way he didn’t like.

Zuko paused. “I mean,” he continued, “I did this once, kind of- when I first came back here after, uh, after you were declared dead and stuff, I couldn’t sleep in my room. It was... well, I don’t know. But the garden was easier. And the grass was comfortable. And having the trees around me again was nice. The only reason I slept in my room the rest of my time there was that my- Ozai told me that I should only sleep in the dirt if I  _ was  _ dirt.”

Against his shoulder, Aang hummed uncritically. “Did he say things like that often? Your dad?”

“I guess. I don’t know.” Zuko shrugged stiffly. “Not anything that I remember.”

They both dropped the conversation. It was obvious that Aang found something of a wild boar-q-pine—some sort of injured thing that would lash out if he tried to poke at it with a stick. Sometimes it’s better to poke at it, to have it rage around and tire itself out until you could get close enough to help, but sometimes you just needed to know when to turn around and walk away from a dangerous situation.

To their left, water was pulled to the shore of a pond, moonlight rippling and reflecting back onto the leaves of the trees above it. To their right, an artistic formation of rocks that would be very fun to hop around on. In front of them, past the breeze of swaying branches, the door to the palace opened up and deposited four more kids.

“Aw,  _ man,”  _ Sokka said upon sight of them, “I was so sure that we’d be the first ones here. Why’d you guys have to go ruin that for me?”

“I already told you that Aang and Zuko weren’t in their rooms,” Toph said.  _ “Why  _ would you think we’d be the first ones out? And didn’t Suki have to wake you up in the first place?”

Suki punched Sokka’s arm affectionately, even if it wasn’t lightly. “I  _ did  _ have to wake him up. How’d you even manage to fall asleep in there? It was so  _ quiet.  _ And the bed was too soft, and also there was literally no light to see by. Yet I could still hear your snoring in the hallway.”

“My snoring has always haunted you,” Sokka told her. “You’ve told me. And hey, I need my beauty sleep. These looks don’t come easy, you know.”

Aang could feel Zuko snort lightly. He managed to relax against Aang, so they were leaning on each other while everyone else collapsed onto the pillows and blankets around them.

“This is nice,” Katara said in a piano, and with the wind and the crickets as an underlying chorus, her words carried themselves around the little clearing. “The bed  _ was  _ soft, and it was warm, and I didn’t have to worry about the weather, but... a palace is a bit much to start with after living in tents for a year.”

Sokka snapped his fingers. “That’s  _ exactly  _ it. We kind of got used to travelling, huh? Going to be weird to... not travel, I guess. Huh.”

“Well, it’s for a good reason!” Aang interjected cheerfully. “The war is over now, so we don’t have to worry about anything for a while. There will be change, but to change is nature, and we can only grow from here.”

Sokka reached over and patted his shoulder. “You know, you’re a smart kid. I’ve said it before but sometimes I don’t think I give you enough credit.”

“Thanks!” Aang beamed at him. “I just try to live by the monks’ teachings.”

Across from him, Suki crossed her legs and grabbed a pillow. “Is it weird to still be scared? On Kyoshi Island, we never really interacted in the war, but these last few months... I don’t know, it makes me kind of worried about going back. And trying to decide what to do next, or what I should do with my life now that the war isn’t forcing me into anything.”

A prick of ice stabbed through Aang’s spine. Deciding what to do next- it sounded like an impossible goal, and not even one that Aang  _ should  _ be worried about, since the first thing that the monks taught him was to be at the mercy of the air, going wherever it took them and not thinking about where to be.

“No, I understand,” Zuko said, tensing up again. “I mean, I guess I kind of do. I know that I’m going to be crowned Fire Lord. I know I’m going to have to fix what our Nation has done. But I’m still scared. I can’t remember not being scared.”

Aang leaned harder against him and grabbed his arm. He stared at the ground in front of him. Normally, there’d be a fire there, a living flicker that he could style his breaths to.

“We can finally go to the South Pole and live with Dad,” Katara said. “We can... we can rebuild our village. Learn our own culture again. I don’t know how we can start. I don’t know how we can go home and find out what we’re allowed to be without the war, and I’m scared that I’ll never figure it out.”

She sounded close to tears. It made Aang want to reach out, to hug her and promise that they could figure it out together, but he was frozen, clinging to Zuko’s arm and holding his breath for fear that he might start crying. He was worried about his friends. He was just  _ really  _ worried about his friends.

“Man, Katara,” Sokka sniffed. “Way to bring the mood down. Remember, Dad can come home! And everyone else! We’ll...” He sniffed harder. “We’ll have our family again, and we don’t have to be scared of anything, except for the indeterminate future and the inevitable yet horrifying realization that we’ll  _ actually  _ have something more important than stopping a war- god, how did people live like this a hundred years ago? What did everyone  _ do?” _

“I mean, I’d probably know that best out of everyone here,” Toph said. As the only person who couldn’t see Sokka’s silent stream of tears, she was the only one of them willing to continue the conversation. “My parents tried their  _ best  _ to make sure I didn’t get any ‘real world news.’ I didn’t hear a peep about any  _ war  _ until I figured out how to get away from the house myself. A lot of rich Earth Kingdom kids are gonna be  _ real  _ surprised when they hear that a war they’ve never even heard of is over.” She shrugged nonchalantly, looser than Aang ever remembered seeing, less rooted in her place. “I either have to go back to that, or... do something else, I guess.”

They all fell silent. In the absence of fire, Aang focused on the pond- pushing and pulling, water lapping at the dirt, licking up toward the moon like a loyal dog.

“Just for tonight,” he said to the wind, “let’s just all lay together. We can sleep here. We don’t have to worry about anything right now; we can just rest.”

As his words drafted to all of them, they all nodded, eager to stop thinking about the next hurdle they needed to climb over. They could allow themselves a night to pretend they didn’t have to find another duty.

The six of them converged in the middle, laying their heads on each others’ stomachs and embracing who they could. Aang wished Appa and Momo were both with them; those two would definitely be able to bring the cuddle pile up another level. As it was, they were all pretty cozy.

Aang could hear as, one by one, everyone drifted into sleep. He kept his eyes awake. Even as gravity tried to drag his eyes shut, he avoided it, as he always did. His friends’ soft breaths reminded him of lying in bed at the temple, listening to the other three kids that shared his room. And while the Fire Nation had different trees than those at the Southern Air Temple, they still moved with the wind just as easily as the ones at home.

Sometimes, Aang liked to do that. To imagine that he was still home. He didn’t know if the monks would approve of how much he was attached to one place, but he wanted to believe they would be a bit easier to forgive him, given the situation.

Or maybe it was getting easier to ignore his teachings with no one to remind him.

Aang snapped his eyes shut. He squeezed them hard, hard enough to give himself a headache, and kept them there until he could finish telling himself exactly why it was wrong to think like that and how he should adjust himself to more closely follow what the elder monks would try to lecture him on. Maybe, if he spent less time throwing fruit pies at them with Monk Gyatso, it would be easier to remember-

No. Stop. Close your eyes. Meditate on your teachings. Let your emotions flow through, acknowledge them, accept them, let them go. They do not control you. Stick your hands in the dirt and don’t let yourself be moved. Keep your breath moving, stoke your lungs with oxygen.

Slowly, Aang opened his eyes. The trees were still there, and so was Yue. On his last night at the temple, the moon was new; her lack of light made it easy to get lost in a storm.

What  _ can  _ he do now? What was he allowed to do without a war? His people were gone. He was the only one left, and he had the burden of a culture weighing on his shoulders. It was  _ easy  _ to ignore the ashes of genocide when there were other fires to put out. Now, he had to clean it up, and he didn’t know how he could possibly do that alone.

The war, at least, had structure. The war quickly became familiar. Aang didn’t know how he was supposed to find a home in a world completely alien to him.

He snapped his eyes shut again, as hard as he could. It was wrong of him to wish for the war. He was a  _ pacifist.  _ He hated war, and he didn’t want anyone to fight. The relief of peace after defeating the Fire Lord knocked him straight to the ground; he  _ couldn’t  _ want a war.

That time, he tried to remember every single teaching from the monks. It wasn’t an achievable goal; there was a reason they kept libraries. But those libraries were burned down and the only books left were in Aang’s head.

So he had to remember them.

And he didn’t think about what he wanted.

**Author's Note:**

> i'd appreciate it if you let me know what you think! aang is a very interesting character imo.


End file.
